"When we were kids, my mother made my brother and me memorize and recite poems. Though we didn't talk about it until we were adults, we were both stricken by the authority and presence of 'The Red Wheelbarrow.'

For years we had thought about getting tattoos that worked together as a set but had never found a suitable subject. In 2010, he went back to school as English major while I was entering the first year of my MFA in creative writing. While visiting over the winter break and planning our mother's 60th birthday party, talk came around to the poems we memorized a kids and renewed our efforts to find a good set of tattoos. 'The Red Wheelbarrow,' with two perfect, ready made images, solved our dilemma. That night we drew up a pair of white chickens for him and a red wheelbarrow for me and the next day had them done.

Because Williams made use of the rhythm and diction of the American vernacular, we choose a local tattoo parlor that seemed analogous. The website for Hell Bomb Tattoo, in Wichita, KS, displayed an index of, what we imagined to be, classic Mid-Western tattoo art."

I asked Alex if he could send along his brother’s tattoo, as well, and he happily obliged:

And a shot of them together:

As for verse, Alex shared this poem:

Corpus

—she was the kind of girlyou suspected

had something really sweetwritten in

the braille of herbikini line.

Something about flowers orthe uselessness

of melancholy and how goodthings happen

to those who wait politely and say please. So,I checked.

“Thanks,” it said. It was damp and difficultto read.

“I haven’t been fucked like that since I was analter boy.

Thanks.” It was the second “thanks” that reallythrew me.

When she woke, she smiled politelyI made

coffee politely and made my face looksensible and clean.

I haven’t checked since. I don’t even read her e-mail anymore.

Once, I held the door open for her mother, she saidthank you

and I stammered “sorry” pretty loud. It was really the second “thanks”that threw me.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.